\u201cWhen you have brothers singing, you have an instrument no one else can buy.\u201d
– Noel Gallagher, talking about The Bee Gees<\/i><\/p>\n
The above quote and a glowing recommendation from a fellow writer whose musical judgement is typically excellent led me to this album\u2026 this wonderful, aggravating, divisive album.<\/p>\n
The Lemon Twigs are brothers Brian and Michael D\u2019Addario, singers and multi-instrumentalists who between them play guitar, bass, keys and drums, as well as handling production and mixing. They are genuine artisans with an inimitable sibling connection, as well as a shared history as musical theater performers, a background that often influences their vocal approaches and arrangements.<\/p>\n
Everything Harmony<\/i> was the duo\u2019s fourth studio album, regarded by some as a breakthrough of sorts, arriving as it did on the heels of a well-received March 2023 gig backing Colin Blunstone of the Zombies at SXSW. Going into my first listen, I\u2019d seen the Twigs described variously as power pop, glam rock, art rock, and jangle pop. Given that the brothers are avowed fans of The Beatles, arguably the point of origin for all of the above, this makes good sense, even if that set of subgenres covers a considerable stylistic range.<\/p>\n
And then I listened, and had one of the most extreme love\/hate reactions I\u2019ve ever had to an album, more than once experiencing both in response to the same song. There\u2019s no question that this music has been beautifully crafted; it\u2019s full of sonic detail and thoughtful, often creative arrangements. When everything comes together and it works, it\u2019s thrilling in its emulation and amplification of \u201970s-era harmony-heavy pop-rock\u2026 it\u2019s just that, as stylized and out there as the Twigs tend to be, when the elements don\u2019t quite jell, the results can veer quickly from fabulous to train wreck.<\/p>\n
The first four tracks capture all of this. \u201cWhen Winter Comes Around\u201d opens the album with thrummy acoustic picking and warbly lead vocals, a pensive slice of folk-rock that briefly explodes into a cathedral of sound before falling back and wafting away on the breeze. It\u2019s airy and earnest but, beyond that one moment of drama, fails to make much of an impression. \u201cIn My Head,\u201d by contrast, is classicist, exuberant power pop: as the candy-floss harmonies rise and fall over urgently jangling guitars, it\u2019s like Big Star mixed with a dozen Pixy Stix.<\/p>\n
Next up, \u201cCorner Of My Eye\u201d is a gentle, delicate number with lead vocals operatic enough to earn a nod from Freddie Mercury. Fully dissipating any momentum generated by track two, \u201cAny Time Of Day\u201d is a ponderous, melodramatic piano number with a seriously overcooked vocal arrangement; think \u201cthe Bee Gees sing Barry Manilow.\u201d <\/p>\n
The odd choices only get odder in the second third of Everything Harmony<\/i>. \u201cWhat You Were Doing\u201d arrives brimming with jangle-licious brio and Brian Wilson harmonies until you realize you\u2019re listening to an anthem sung by a stalker (\u201cI wanna know \/ Just where you are\u201d). Leaning into its own weirdness, the song devolves into an echoey bridge\/outro and then poof, it\u2019s gone. Next, \u201cI Don\u2019t Belong To Me\u201d offers a pretty piano-and-vocals ballad about drowning, that splices in a trumpet solo near the end for no perceptible reason. Say what?<\/p>\n
The shimmering, gorgeous \u201cEvery Day Is The Worst Day Of My Life\u201d epitomizes my \u201clove it-and<\/i>-hate-it\u201d reaction to this album. The production and arrangement are superb, pushing the song into the harmonic heights again and again until it finishes with a super-cool vocal round. The lyric, though\u2014which consists entirely of the title chanted over and over again\u2014feels like the pinnacle of self-pitying privileged-white-boy mopiness. The net result is a superb piece of musical craftsmanship that\u2019s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. (Maybe it was intended ironically? I can only hope.)<\/p>\n
Big strings and operatic vocals meet on \u201cWhat Happens To A Heart,\u201d which gives off distinct \u201cGod Only Knows\u201d vibes at times. The following \u201cStill It\u2019s Not Enough\u201d slumbers along in gauzy prettiness until strings lift it into the sky as the brothers\u2019 voices overlay into another spectacular vocal round-robin\u2026 on a song in which the acquisitive narrator is never satisfied because \u201cnothing was ever enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the final act, the woe-is-me ballad \u201cBorn To Be Lonely\u201d builds and flows, flares and recedes like a show tune, animated by a sort of off-kilter Broadway flair. Then late highlight \u201cGhost Run Free\u201d delivers bouncy power pop lit up by a sunny chorus supported with limber, driving bass and shimmery, glammy guitars. The title track delivers the band\u2019s mission statement\u2014\u201cAnd I like the song when it\u2019s dreamy \/ And I\u2019m so obsessed when it\u2019s everything harmony\u201d\u2014before delving into vocal gymnastics on the chorus that suggest the bros have listened to a lot of REM. Closer \u201cNew To Me\u201d is a kind of resigned breakup song set to acoustic guitar and complex harmonies; it has potential, but ends up entirely too affected for this listener. <\/p>\n
Everything Harmony<\/i> received a number of rapturous reviews, earning an 87 out of 100 on Metacritic with more than one writer commenting on how the album\u2019s vibe echoes the \u201cbeautiful despair\u201d of post-Pet Sounds<\/i> Beach Boys. Here\u2019s the thing: that shit drives me crazy. To me there\u2019s nothing the least bit romantic or attractive about self-pity; it\u2019s a nauseating spiral of self-absorption that accomplishes nothing. <\/p>\n
Everything Harmony<\/i> is an often-gorgeous, meticulously produced and arranged album whose lyrics made me roll my eyes so many times that I may be sore tomorrow. This one gets an A- for production, vocal quality and melodic sensibilities, a C for overdone quirkiness, and a D for lyrics. We\u2019ve all had our moments of mopiness, to be sure\u2014but there\u2019s a fine line between sad and insufferable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10989],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46952","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-lemon-twigs","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46952"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}